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What exactly is a normal curve distribution, and how do you calculate it from the mean and standard distribution?
That’s it. I’m packing my bags, hitching a ride on the next rocket, and finding a way to skate on the icy nitrogen glaciers of Pluto. The latest flover animation from New Horizons data takes us soaring in the skies over the aching expanses of Sputnik Planum and the jagged teeth of Hillary Montes. Check…
In 1988 Timothy Wilkinson, a British designer at frog design in Silicon Valley, was tasked with creating a logo for the biggest peripheral maker in the world: Logitech. The company kept Wilkinson’s logo around for almost 30 years. And while it long seemed weird to me, it’s also completely brilliant. When he designed it, Wilkinson…
So your taps have run dry in the drought and you desperately need more water for your family. Why not just dig another well? For starters, the cost of digging a well might be more than you paid for your house. And then there’s another issue: No matter how deep you dig, someone with more…
We were busy playing with Windows 10 all week, and published some great science explainers and debunks, none of which fascinated the internet quite as much as Converse sneakers’ first redesign in nearly a century. Here are the highlights! I Installed Windows 10 and Now I’m Talking to My Computer Unless you’re one of the…
In Humboldt County, Nevada, over a third of the population leaves for work in the middle of the night. Central and Mountain Time Americans tend to hit the road between 7:30 and 8 am, while East and West Coasters are all over the place. By 10 am, America’s roads have fallen silent. Designer Jody Sieradzki…
It’s a dark and stormy night, 28,000 feet over the Midwest. Just after 10:30 PM, I’m standing aft of the cockpit of a NASA DC-8, while lightning flashes outside the cabin windows. A team of scientists recently took to the skies over Kansas and Nebraska to study how nighttime thunderstorms form over the Great Plains.…
Video games are rapidly becoming an actual, professional sport. How can you tell? The prizes and prestige are now big enough that gaming leagues will test players for performance enhancing drug use. Our friends at Kotaku are busy discussing some of the potential loopholes.
Would you look at that, it’s the weekend again! Okay so most of us have a few more hours before we’re out of work, but depending on your timezone you may already be in the pub. If you have to work this weekend, Sad Dawson cries with you. Today on Gizmodo we looked at selfie…
Murders and executions: American Psycho: The Musical is heading to Broadway early next year, with Benjamin Walker (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) cast as serial killer/Huey Lewis fan Patrick Bateman. The Bret Easton Ellis adaptation debuted in 2013 in London, with Matt Smith (Doctor Who) on blood-spray duty.
Gmail’s Undo Send feature gives users of Google’s free email service up to 30 seconds to change their mind on a sent email before it leaves their outbox. But a new Chrome extension called Dmail lets you send messages with a self-destruct timer—or the ability to remotely delete them whenever you want. If you send…
Long before humans had figured out beer, we learned that you can make a damn tasty crunk-juice by stewing rainwater in a beehive. Mead was the drink of ancient Greek philosophers, Asian hunter-gatherers, and Celtic berserkers. It’s also the secret behind some of the best summer cocktails. It’s Friday afternoon, you’ve made it through the…
A picture of some deformed plant sex organs is alarming people all over the internet this week. The photo, taken by Twitter user @san_kaido, shows a bunch of daisies that look like conjoined twins. The accompanying tweet describes their twisted, ribbonlike appearance, and reports a radiation reading for the spot. Given that the photo was…
We think we’re in love. The New Horizons probe swivelled around after the Pluto Flyby to take a nightside snapshot of the dwarf planet. The result is both beautiful and scientifically fascinating, the very best combination. After the closest approach flyby on July 14, 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft continued soaring past the Pluto-Charon system…
Borrowing a neat trick from the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey, Spin Master has created a new RC plane that’s able to take off and land vertically at the push of a button. The Air Hogs Fury Jump Jet’s wings and rotors both rotate to point up, essentially turning the plane into a helicopter that can…
The FCC has approved AT&T’s $48.5 billion purchase of DirecTV. That means the second-biggest cell carrier is officially merging with the biggest satellite TV provider. Two giant companies merging is rarely a good deal for people who use their services, especially in an industry like broadband—that’s one of the reasons the dreaded Time Warner-Comcast merger…
Watch as this motorbike engine gets sanded down millimeter by millimeter. This is so much cooler than seeing something poof and disappear away because we get to watch it slowly disintegrate into nothing. It’s like seeing decay of a hundred years over a few seconds. Each peeled back layer exposes something new in the engine…
It’s a telescoping pole with a flexible gripper for your phone at the end. Inside, a cable connects the button on the handle with with your phone. Click the button and it takes a picture! From three feet away! People call them selfie sticks, but I’ve never used mine for selfies. I do things that…
Starting today, Microsoft begins selling 64GB and 128GB Surface 3s on AT&T and T-Mobile (through the Microsoft store). In addition, Microsoft’s Atom-powered tablet/computer hybrid will be available in AT&T stores. T-Mobile will begin selling the tablet on July 31. For LTE, you’ll be paying a cool $100 extra. [Microsoft] https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-surface-3-review-the-tablet-i-want-at-the-pr-1696598172
A searchable database of all your memories—creepy? Or a blessing for your shrinking attention span? Either way, Google has scored a patent for just such a device. To be clear, this doesn’t have anything to do with your brain. We’re not talking about an embedded chip literally storing your memories, as depicted in the fantastic…